Jason Sandford
Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.
H.K. Edgerton is nothing if not persistent. He’s been waving his Confederate flag for years, and he’s marched thousands of miles across America. Now he’s on a trek to Washington, to speak to President-elect Barack Obama.
Edgerton’s mission, as usual, is to promote his flag and what he thinks it stands for. The Charlottesville Daily Progress has the story:
The Confederate battle flag billowed, flapped and fluttered in Friday’s cold wind as H.K. Edgerton led his one-man march up U.S. 29 to Washington in hopes of gaining a little respect.
Edgerton, 65, a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, is marching from his Black Mountain, N.C., home to ask President-elect Barack Obama to extend an olive branch to traditional Southerners. His improbable journey for an unlikely cause seeks what may be the politically impossible: official U.S. government recognition of the Confederate battle flag as a symbol of Southern heritage.
What makes Edgerton different than most advocates for his cause is that he’s black.
“I’m an African-American and I’m a Southerner and I believe my heritage, which is represented by the flag bearing the Christian Cross of St. Andrew, is being ignored and destroyed. It’s continuing to divide the black folks and the white folks who have a lot in common,” Edgerton said, stopping his forward march for a hot beverage at the Dunkin’ Donuts just north of Fray’s Mill Road.
“Mr. Obama said he is about unity and bringing this nation together. If he is truly a man of unity, I hope he will consider showing the Southerner that [the Southerner] is an important part of this country,” he said.
Edgerton offers advice on how that can be accomplished.
“He could have a Confederate color guard at the White House,” he said. “He could give the Confederate flag a respected place as part of the history and heritage of this country.”
That is unlikely to happen. The flag has become a magnet for racial division. Racists and white supremacy groups wave the flag to represent their cause and civil rights leaders point to the flag as a symbol of repression and slavery.
Edgerton insists that’s wrong.
“It does not represent slavery, although slavery was a fact of life. The flag represents a heritage, a way of life that my forebears had.
Before any of you guys jump on the “H.K. is O.K.” bandwagon, here is some news: back in 2002, H.K. and his best white friend Kirk Lyons of Black Mountain led an effort of the Executive Committee of the N.C. Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans in a purge of 300 members (10% of the state division at that time) for openly opposing the coup-like removal of the newly elected SCV officer, Tom Smith, who was also from North Carolina. His (and their) crime: being too liberal in the “fight for southern heritage”. Their motto of “Honoring Our Veterans, Nothing More, Never Less” was too touchy-feely for the SCV Old Guard, and Smith’s habit of reaching out to local NAACP chapters to reconcile differernces over monuments and historical markers rubbed the neo-confederate partisans the wrong way.
H.K. is a radical. His interpretation that most blacks’ service for the Confederacy was voluntary is ludicrous. And I say this as a Confederate descendant. My ancestors were brave and honorable, but they were wrong and their cause was not just. The flag belongs in museums and at reenactments, not flying over state houses as a form of partisan resistance.
H.K. Edgerton is a man of knowledge and wisdom. He has done his home work and it is a shame that those who speak out against what he stands for are the ones who have not studied at all. Slavery lived in the north as well and many ot the norther gernerals in the war owned slaves and fought for the preservation of the union as it was. One with slavery and the preservtion it. The north attempted to make a permenent fixture to the US Constitution protecting slavery and went as far as to place an additonal clause that no government can interfere with its institution. This was just two months before Fort Sumter. Check the National Arcives under "Twenty Years of Congress". Look under the 13th ammentdment.
I’d support him. He is allowing a symbol to evolve into a regional flag, why not let it. If he succeeds in a few years a lot of people will gain pride in being a southerner regardless of race and start working together. I don’t see that as a bad thing. Heck I thought the south had their flag back in the 70s until this political correctness thing turned it back into a raciest symbol. It means a lot to southerners so let it evolve into the symbol of the south, don’t dwell on the past. Southerners just want their own flag. It has worked for the American flag which stood for slavery way before the southern cross was even thought of.
As a cop said to us outside the Civic Center when Hillary was in town — the motorcade had to abort its stop because he was right next to where she’d step out — "HK just has some funny ideas."
No offense, but the way of life of his forbears was to work farms for no pay. I suspect the first person to punch him in the mouth would be his own great-grandfather.